false http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1165626048m/7526.jpg 7526 8 Starred Review. As he did so memorably for baseball in Moneyball, Lewis takes a statistical X-ray of the hidden substructure of football, outlining the invisible doings of unsung players that determine the outcome more than the showy exploits of point scorers. In his sketch of the gridiron arms race, first came the modern, meticulously choreographed passing offense, then the ferocious defensive pass rusher whose bone-crunching quarterback sacks demolished the best-laid passing game, and finally the rise of the left tackle—the offensive lineman tasked with protecting the quarterback from the pass rusher—whose presence is felt only through the game-deciding absence of said sacks. A rare creature combining 300 pounds of bulk with "the body control of a ballerina," the anonymous left tackle, Lewis notes, is now often a team's highest-paid player. Lewis fleshes this out with the colorful saga of left tackle prodigy Michael Oher. An intermittently homeless Memphis ghetto kid taken in by a rich white family and a Christian high school, Oher's preternatural size and agility soon has every college coach in the country courting him obsequiously. Combining a tour de force of sports analysis with a piquant ethnography of the South's pigskin mania, Lewis probes the fascinating question of whether football is a matter of brute force or subtle intellect. Photos. (Oct.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From Bookmarks Magazine 808779 2 9 2006 The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game total:2452|5:679|4:1188|3:502|2:75|1:8| 2452 9811 3383 525 3 1 false false Sat Mar 01 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Mon Mar 24 21:32:40 -0700 2008 Mon Mar 24 22:01:41 -0700 2008
Michael Lewis is probably my favorite living author.

About 1980, Tracey Kidder wrote "THE SOUL OF A NEW MACHINE".

A book about how a bunch of employees at a computer company
designed a new comp...more...]]> 4 2 false false Wed Aug 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Wed Dec 19 12:25:02 -0800 2007 Fri Dec 21 23:51:26 -0800 2007 more...]]> 3 1 false false Sat Sep 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Thu Oct 25 07:36:31 -0700 2007 Thu Oct 25 07:36:31 -0700 2007
A real shame that the second half is phoned in. The first half is brilliant; at once a wonderful, heartbreaking story about a real person, and a clean, clear look at the evolution of the passing game and the roles of pass rushers and left tackles. And I know what the West Coa...more...]]> 3 1 true false Mon Oct 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Fri Oct 12 15:09:07 -0700 2007 Wed Oct 31 08:02:45 -0700 2007 Hoop Dreams detailed the machine built around taking poor black athletes from the inner city and sticking them into primarily white school systems that only cared about those athletes to the extent that they would help their sports teams win. The Blind Side concerns itself with a similar story, exce...more...]]> 4 1 false false Thu Nov 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Wed Feb 14 12:03:01 -0800 2007 Wed Feb 14 12:07:22 -0800 2007 more...]]> 3 1 false false Mon Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2007 Tue Mar 17 08:28:18 -0700 2009 Tue Mar 17 08:28:18 -0700 2009 more...]]> 0 0 false false Wed Sep 30 12:49:28 -0700 2009 Wed Sep 30 12:49:28 -0700 2009 more...]]> 3 0 false false Thu Apr 02 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Thu Apr 02 22:03:14 -0700 2009 Thu Apr 02 22:14:15 -0700 2009 more...]]> 5 1 false false Sun Mar 01 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Mon Mar 16 08:15:15 -0700 2009 Mon Mar 16 08:15:53 -0700 2009 more...]]> 0 0 false false Thu Feb 05 09:50:16 -0800 2009 Thu Feb 05 09:50:16 -0800 2009 As in Moneyball (**** July/Aug 2003), which chronicled the strategies behind the Oakland A's general manager Billy Beane, Berkeley-based author Michael Lewis takes a personal look at a complicated game in his newest nonfiction extravaganza. Just as they embraced Moneyball, critics eagerly wrap their...

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The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game is a book by Michael Lewis released in 2006 about American football. It features two dominant storylines. The first is an examination of how offensive foot...more...]]> 4 0 false false Sat Nov 14 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Sat Nov 14 21:29:18 -0800 2009 Sat Nov 14 21:35:40 -0800 2009
Curious to read the book before the movies comes out in a few weeks, I took the book back from a younger cousin (we gave him the gift a few years ago when he was starting to play football).

This book co...more...]]> 3 0 false true Tue Nov 10 07:51:23 -0800 2009 Tue Nov 10 08:22:39 -0800 2009
1) The author misspells Bob Stoops' name. This is problematic considering Stoops' team played in the National Championship Michael's junior and senior year of high school, meaning that they would be ...more...]]> 5 0 false false Mon Nov 09 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Mon Nov 09 19:27:39 -0800 2009 Mon Nov 09 19:43:30 -0800 2009
The left tackle is the guy who protects the quarterback on the side that most right handers are not facing, i.e. the blind side. In the early 1980s, this guy was being pai...more...]]> 4 0 false false Mon Aug 03 10:40:34 -0700 2009 Mon Aug 03 10:59:22 -0700 2009 more...]]> 4 1 false false Thu Jul 23 22:29:04 -0700 2009 Thu Jul 23 22:48:23 -0700 2009 more...]]> 3 0 false false Thu May 14 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Thu May 14 15:46:05 -0700 2009 Thu May 14 16:01:12 -0700 2009 more...]]> 5 0 false false Sun Feb 01 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Sun May 10 15:15:04 -0700 2009 Sun May 10 15:46:55 -0700 2009 One one level this is a football story. A h...more...]]> 4 0 false false Tue Apr 28 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Wed Apr 29 09:41:15 -0700 2009 Wed Apr 29 09:55:56 -0700 2009 more...]]> 3 0 false false Mon Apr 27 16:00:16 -0700 2009 Mon Apr 27 16:08:55 -0700 2009 more...]]> http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=7526